London has been battered by 50mph winds that have felled trees and caused travel chaos. Powerful gusts swept across the capital as the Met Office issued a yellow "be aware" weather alert for most of the country.

In his Budget speech, Alistair Darling received one of the biggest cheers from his own side when he mentioned Belize.

Suddenly, this tiny Central American state is writ large in British consciousness. The Chancellor would like us to believe it's crawling with tax avoiders and evaders. Of course, we all know his real target is the Tory party donor and treasurer Lord Ashcroft, who bases his financial affairs there, hence the crowing from the Labour benches.

Nevertheless, the truth is that his sudden interest in the tropical paradise and its most famous inhabitant is a sideshow, a distraction from his major enemy. Me. I live in west London, in a house that I've owned since 1998, and when I last had it valued was worth just over £1 million.

But in the way Darling presented his scrapping of stamp duty for first-time buyers on homes worth up to £250,000 and the increase to five per cent in the levy on sales of homes worth more than £1 million, I'm a villain. He's Robin Hood, taking from the rich to give to the poor - and I'm the rich.

There are a lot of people like me. According to Zoopla, the property website, around 80 per cent of the 185,000 homes in England and Wales with seven-figure price tags are in London and the South-East.

Of that 80 per cent, the majority live in an arc to the west of the centre (that's how it is in most cities in western Europe). As areas like Belgravia and Chelsea became overpriced, people pushed further west and out into the Home Counties.

The reality today is that £1 million does not buy you a palace, not in the South-East. Yet the braying Labour MPs yesterday would have us all marked down as something deplorable - not dissimilar from those who stash their money in a place like Belize.

When his policy makers came up with the £1 million figure, Darling will have considered the political implications. He will have realised that his own supporters will not suffer, but that he will be hitting predominantly Tory and Liberal-Democrat constituencies.

The political logic was the same with the western extension of the congestion charge zone three years ago. In theory, the fee is supposed to combat congestion but the extension was only made to the west of London. Why? Are there no clogged roads in the east?

The answer is that there are - but Ken Livingstone, when he was Mayor, decided to focus on the west, not in the east where more Labour voters resided. If he'd been serious about alleviating congestion he would have made the extension circular, taking in the blocked arteries of Bethnal Green, Elephant & Castle and South Lambeth.

Instead, he chose to play games, concentrating entirely on the west. He did so knowing the fallout to his own standing would not be significant - so confident was he that Livingstone was even able to ignore the results of a consultation exercise with west London residents. It is Labour's class war in west London by other means.

One politician who thought along similar lines to Darling but was quickly made to think better of it was Vince Cable. At the last Liberal Democrat conference, he sprung a £1 million "mansion" tax on his party. There was uproar. Not only were his fellow frontbenchers not consulted but many of them hailed from constituencies that would be directly affected by the new levy.

In Richmond Park, for example, held by the MP, Susan Kramer, he was in danger of automatically handing victory to the Tory challenger, Zac Goldsmith.

It was pointed out to Vince too that in the South-East we've long since passed the stage where a £1 million home constituted a "mansion". He beat a hasty retreat and upped the limit to £2 million.

Cable had no choice: he was risking wiping away at a stroke hard-won Liberal Democrat majorities. Darling, however, does not have the same concern - he knows full well that he is unlikely to lose Labour votes by going for £1 million.

He said yesterday that he was not motivated by "dogma and ideology". Pull the other one. As well as being sure Labour support would not suffer and clobbering the Tories and Lib-Dems, he clings to the belief that £1 million is a colossal amount of money. It might be - in cash - but not where property prices west of London are concerned.

Instead, Darling harped on about "fairness". It's Labour's new mantra, their key word for the forthcoming election battle. But where is the fairness in making the removal of stamp duty for first-time buyers up to £250,000 temporary - it is to last only two years - and not applying the same time limit to the £1 million brigade? He said that one was to pay for the other - in which case, why not give them the same time-frame?

It's a lie, in other words - another permanent stealth tax on those he believes can afford it and weren't going to vote for his party anyway.

To that, for many of the £1 million home owners, can be added the higher 50 per cent tax band and the removal of personal allowance and pension tax reliefs.

Much is being made of the claim that the rich will find devices to avoid the stamp duty and other taxes. Some might - anyone who owns a seriously top-end home, worth north of £2 million, could well be the sort who has a tax adviser and may be tempted to put it into an offshore trust.

The majority, however, in the £1 million-and-just-above bracket, are not in that category. We're already seeing loft and basement conversions galore by those who can't afford to move to accommodate growing families. Now, thanks to the west London tax, we're going to see far more. Thank you very much, Chancellor.